Wild Hearts

by Bridget Essex

  “Consider it done.” Fanny hoists a comically large black backpack onto her shoulder. It's so big that I feel she should tip over from the weight, but it doesn't appear to even affect her.

  “We'll talk tomorrow, kiddo,” says Fanny, her eyes twinkling as she gazes at me. She blows us both a kiss and wiggles her fingers again. “Toodle-oo!”

  And, with that, she skips over the stacked furniture and out of an odd little door in the far wall...one I didn't see before.

  It settles shut behind her, and I hear a lock turning.

  And then she's gone.

  I blink, then glance at Silver. She's settling down onto her side on the mattress, one long arm pillowed beneath her head, her eyes closed, her face tight and drawn.

  “I've used up too much energy this last little while...” she murmurs to me. “I hate to ask you to wait to meet your grandmother...I hate to ask you...”

  “You're not asking,” I tell her. I crouch down beside her, then fold my legs beneath me. “Please...don't worry. I don't mind.”

  She looks shockingly pale.

  I reach out slowly, lay a hand on her forearm.

  She's still hot to the touch. I can feel the solidity of her muscles beneath the flannel of her shirt.

  And I can feel her tiredness, too.

  It rolls over me in one large wave, and suddenly I'm struggling to keep my eyes open.

  “Are we really safe here?” I murmur to her.

  “We're safe,” Silver mumbles.

  And then, softly, she growls: “I promise.”

  I don't give it a second thought.

  I believe her.

  I lay down beside her on the soft mattress, close my eyes.

  And I sleep.

  Chapter 16: Truly Wild

  Light wakes me.

  Moonlight.

  Full and soft, shining through an octagon-shaped window at the peak in the roof.

  All of the lamps in the attic room are turned off. The silver glow of the moon is the only light in the room; it penetrates through the darkness, illuminating a patch of the bed.

  And this is where she sits, cross-legged, face turned up to bask in that light.

  Silver.

  Her eyes are closed, her mouth soft, her full lips parted. Her breathing is slow and steady, her chest rising and falling with a hypnotic rhythm that pulls my gaze. My eyes drift along the tangled curls of her white hair, over the powerful slope of her shoulders. The flannel shirt that she's wearing is finally unbuttoned down the front, revealing a white ribbed tank top beneath it. The curve of her chest, its slow rise and fall, pulls me in...

  But I can't tear my eyes from her expression to take in everything else for more than a heartbeat.

  She is serene, full of ease and calm.

  She lifts her chin to the moon. That silver quality of moonlight washes over her, and it's almost like...

  Well, it's almost like it's filling her up.

  But light isn't like water. It can't fill a vessel, can't overflow.

  But as I lie on my side, as I watch Silver, I get the distinct feeling...

  That the moonlight is pouring into her.

  As if in response to my thoughts, I start to notice a subtle sort of glow around her, halo-like. I blink once, twice...maybe I'm just still tired, seeing things. But when I press the heel of my hand against my eyes, let them clear, I know.

  I'm not imagining it.

  There's a glow.

  It's real.

  And it's starting to drift over her body.

  I can't tell where, exactly, the glow begins. It seems that the parts of her skin that are visible are brighter than her clothing, but the origin of the light is something that's inside of her, all of her.

  Everything about her is made of light as she basks in the moon.

  This is beautiful to watch.

  She is beautiful.

  As if she senses my gaze, Silver opens her eyes.

  She turns and she glances at me.

  Her smile is soft as she puts her head to the side a little.

  “Hello,” she murmurs, voice as warm as her grin.

  “Hello,” I murmur back. I don't move. I stay, lying on my side, my head pillowed beneath my arm. I return her smile, feeling my own mouth turn up at the corners, feeling her warmth steal over me, by degrees.

  I stay as I am, and I watch her.

  Silver stretches overhead, moving her spine in a graceful curve, a little like a cat. She lets her fingers drift over her own shoulders, massaging a part of her muscle with the pad of her thumb, letting out a sigh.

  I watch her do this, and I can feel the heat rising inside of me. Here, at least, I know its origins, can feel the warmth unfurling in my belly, radiating into my limbs, over my face.

  Between my legs.

  My breathing begins to come faster. The change is almost imperceptible, but I feel—wholly—in my body at the moment, so it's something I notice.

  Right now, no part of me is in my head, sifting through my thoughts with the practiced habit of an over-thinker. I am present.

  I am here, with her.

  So, yes, I recognize when my breath comes faster, I recognize that my heart has started to beat in a staccato rhythm, blood rushing through me, vital heat.

  Heat...

  Silver turns, pressing her palms into the bed. It's a slow movement, almost a gradual one as she leans forward, onto hands and knees.

  Here, now, I can see the wolf in her.

  Maybe it's the quality of her profile with that wolfish nose.

  Maybe it's her body language, at once perfectly at ease...

  And, at the same time, wild.

  Because only a wild creature could move with such supple grace. She leans her weight forward, into her shoulders, and she gazes down at me with eyes that contain an incandescent brightness.

  Is it the moonlight, reflecting there...

  Or is she all light, now?

  We are so close to each other.

  So close, in the dark.

  She takes in a deep breath, and she lets it out slowly. Her lips are parted, and they are wet.

  And this, too, draws my gaze. I can't help my eyes lingering over her long lashes, the cheekbones angular and almost sharp. These, too, give a wolfish slant. Her tangled curls have tumbled over her shoulders, hanging down on one side of her face.

  No longer in the moonlight, she still glows. It's soft, the luminescence that shines from her curls, from her eyes, from her skin, an almost imperceptible brightness...

  I wonder...

  I reach up. She's close enough that I don't have to reach very far. And then my fingertips graze the curve of her jaw, caressing the light.

  When you first wake from sleep, there's a certain softness to everything. Dreams, like cobwebs, dust the corners of your mind. You are warm, held by your mattress and your blankets and the totality of softness it took to relax into those dreams.

  Here, in the borderland of Awake and Asleep...

  Things are just a little more possible.

  I don't take my fingers from her skin. I reach further, letting my palm caress the curve of her jaw. I watch, closely, where we connect, watch closely where my skin meets her own.

  But then I flick my gaze to her eyes.

  They are bright, the ice blue melting as I touch her, becoming more vibrant, somehow.

  There is nothing cold about her gaze as I touch her.

  And, as I do, Silver closes her eyes.

  She turns her face.

  She leans into my caress.

  I can feel her pulse beneath my fingertips.

  It's racing, too.

  Her breath is hot on my wrist. Her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks, as if she's thinking about something.

  And then she opens her eyes.

  There's a sound like a gasp, and then I realize that's because I just made it. I gasped, into the stillness.

  Because her eyes, that perfect light blue just a heartbeat or two ago, so crystalline t
hat they remind me of blizzards and ice and the sharpness of winter...

  They contain no sharpness now.

  There isn't even any blue left.

  There is only light.

  It's...unnerving.

  Almost.

  If things weren't edged with softness, maybe I would pull back.

  Not because it frightens me, but because the unfamiliarity is jarring.

  But...this is Silver.

  And nothing about her is jarring.

  So I stay with her, my hand stays, warm and soft, along the curve of her jaw as she gazes down at me.

  I am bathed in her light as she lowers herself to me.

  It's gradual and slow, her movement. It is perfectly paced for my comfort.

  Her body tells me: if you don't want this, just say the word.

  Say “no,” and I will stop.

  Say “no,” and I'll apologize and end this.

  But “no” does not exist here.

  It does not exist in the space between us.

  And it does not exist in any part of me as I reach up and wrap my arms around her neck, pulling her the last little way down to me.

  Her kiss is wild. Her mouth has power to it. There is strength in the way she parts my lips further, strength in the way she, too, wraps her arms about me. I am fully held by her embrace, and it is surprising, but I am held by her kiss, too.

  If I was wholly in the moment, if I was wholly in my body, now I am aware entirely of the places where Silver and I touch and nothing else.

  My mouth, her mouth, this kiss...

  It is here where I am most alive.

  The heat of her breath washes over me. Her tongue, too, is molten as it enters my mouth. Did I wonder what her lips would feel like? Because I'm surprised by the heat here, and if I'm surprised, then I definitely wondered.

  I know the truth:

  I thought about this.

  I wanted this.

  I wanted this from almost the first moment I saw her, human, crouching on the floor in the dark convenience store, her hair wild, her eyes wilder...

  All of her wild.

  I feel the sculpture of her shoulders beneath my hands, and I want to shiver beneath her, want to exhale and explore with my fingertips this artistic build...

  But her hands are on my shoulders, sliding down my arms and forearms to grasp my wrists. There is a pronounced gentleness as she pushes a little weight into her hold on them, pressing my wrists into the bed. She has such strength. The greatest show of it is in all the ways she carries herself, her movements, the ways that she shows her gentleness. Great strength is not in an overt show of power, but in all the ways you temper it.

  So she pushes my wrists into the bed, and her fingers wrapped around them are soft. I feel her weight behind it, can feel her power, and—just to see—I try to move my hands, push my arms up.

  She moves with me.

  And she stops.

  She lifts her face from mine. She is panting, her mouth swollen and gleaming, her eyes bright. Her lids lower, her lashes grazing her cheeks, as she gazes down at me, her chest rising and falling quickly.

  “Do you want me to stop?” she growls to me.

  “No,” I tell her, voice low, watching her arched over me, letting my eyes drift over all the ways my kiss has changed her.

  My blood rises in me, hot, quick.

  And I reach up again, her palms sliding down my arms, as I move with purpose, this time.

  My fingertips dig a little into her shoulders as I draw her down to me.

  And that's when the wolf rises.

  In both of us now.

  I remember the change. It was only a couple of hours ago, after all. And I don't think I'll ever be able to forget the vastness of that pain.

  But there is no pain in me now as strength pulses through me.

  To say that I feel more animal sounds...disingenuous. It implies that, somewhere outside of me exists an animal part of me. But I understand, now, at least a little, of what it means to be a wolf. Because there is no outside wolf, and then me, Ella, and we're merging, somehow.

  This wolf is not separate from me, has never been separate from me.

  This is who I am.

  This has always been inside of me, part of me.

  And I never knew it.

  There's sorrow, along my edges, as I realize this. That there has been this enormous part of me that I did not honor or love, this whole part of me that existed, invisible and starved inside of me.

  But it's here, now.

  It's here, and I feel it, and I know it for what it is.

  And I love this part, too.

  I am always aware of Silver's scent. But now, the cologne of her skin and hair, the sweetness of her mouth, even the vitality of her center...it is strong. Strong scents are inherently, usually, unpalatable.

  But there is a positive and a negative side to strength, as there is to almost everything.

  And this, all of this, is good.

  There is the scent of Silver, of pine trees and far-away starry skies, of milk-white moonlight and the subtle rawness of honey. There is a wilderness to her, in the tangled white curls that smell of autumn leaves and the sharp metallic blossom of snow, of the sleeping earth, frozen ground beneath blankets of winter. There is the impossible sweetness of her skin, mixed with the power of the unyielding wild.

  And, oh, God, beneath all of that runs the river of her wetness. The silky savor of it rises all around us, between us, twining us together as she growls against my mouth. Her hands are at my waist, her fingers reaching beneath the waistband of my skirt.

  The callous along the edge of her thumb drags over my naval. The hardness of her hands, lines of work and labor that merge with the softness of her hands.

  She palms my stomach, pressing the heat of her skin against my skin, her tongue against my tongue, her mouth to my mouth.

  There is the quality of sustenance, of life-giving work as she hooks her fingers in my waistband, dragging it down, over my thighs, the fabric pooling around my calves until I kick it off with frustration.

  For her fingertips are at the band of my panties, and these, too, slide off me, a little faster, this time.

  My blouse is pushed up, my bra is pushed up, and then I am naked, and she is clothed, and clouds scuttle across the moon beyond the window, darkening the room as she gazes down at me in my nakedness.

  Her eyes cloud too, her mouth open, her breathing fast and ragged. Desire rises in her as she bends down, as she presses a heated kiss to my collarbone, heat rising, rising, as she opens her mouth, trailing her tongue along the curve of my neck.

  My breath hitches in my throat.

  There are teeth, sharp, strong, against my skin, a nip that makes me gasp out into the stillness. I arch my back a little as her hands drift to the curves of my waist.

  My own hands have found the collar of her shirt, and my fingers the edge of the tank-top. I want to see her again, want to see the slopes of her shoulders, see the muscles on her stomach and her arms.

  I want to taste her.

  Silver obliges my frustrations, shrugging out of the flannel, and when I grasp the bottom hem of her tank-top, she sits up and back onto her heels, dragging the shirt up and over her head, tossing it beside us on the bed.

  My breath catches, and I'm pushing myself up too, lifting my hands to press palms to her belly, fingertips tracing the subtle curves of her breasts, the pronounced peaks of her nipples, hard and full and large.

  My mouth is there. I lean forward, eyes closed as I take her right breast in my hand, squeeze and lift and open my mouth, breathing heat against the hardness before I savor a taste. Her skin...it is honeyed with sweetness. The salt of sweat, the aroma of her skin's cologne, all that is Silver enters my mouth, and it is exquisite.

  She is exquisite.

  I am dying of hunger for her.

  I must devour.

  She growls against me, letting her head fall back in the moonlight, her neck a su
pple curve, beautiful. My fingers grasp the swells of her hips through her jeans, and she is pushing me back then, back to lie on the bed.

  My fingers find the button of her jeans, the zipper, and we move together, tugging them off.

  The heat is rising.

  There is no time for words, for slow, measured movements.

  She grasps my legs, her fingers closing over my calves as she turns her head, her tongue tracing a hot trail along my skin there, to the back of my right knee. I groan out, but it changes into a growl of my own as I feel her rough palms on the tender skin of my thighs, pressing, pushing, into the backs of my knees.

  Spreading my legs, spreading them wide open, pushing my knees into the mattress.

  I open to her, entirely open.

  She rises over me in the dark...but is there, really, dark here?

  She is as bright as the moon as she stares down at me, her eyes roving over my nakedness, taking it in, her mouth open, panting. My center is all wetness, shining, in her light. Spread open as I am, the muscles in my legs cry out, but it is a delicious cry.

  She rises over me, the muscled slopes of her belly, the curves of the muscles on her hips, the tangle of curls at her center the color of the moon.

  She presses her mound to mine, and my slickness coats her belly, her curls, as I cry out, arching my back, my hands reaching, grasping, curling around her upper arms, fingernails embedding in her skin.

  “Ella...” she growls to me, and there is strength to that single word, but there is also a subtle pleading, a begging.

  A prayer.

  “Please,” I tell her, because there is no other word I can speak or say or moan to convey my want.

  No.

  We are past want, now..

  There is only need.

  She grinds down, her hips against my hips, her mound to my center. The friction, the satin wetness, the heat...

  Oh, God, the heat...

  It is overpowering in its immensity, just as she is overpowering, the strength of her palms against my thighs, pressing, opening me up to her.

  The nails of my fingers are pressing into the skin of her shoulders. I am scratching her, I must be scratching her, because the throbbing between my legs is everything I am, and it is too much.

  She thrusts herself down on me, grinding into me over and over, her hips moving with a rhythm I feel in my bones and blood. Her mouth finds my neck, her teeth and tongue against my skin, and as she bites me—gently, but with force—I can feel it rising inside of me.